350 LIFE OF COTTOX. 



of the several sentiments contained in his writings. But the 

 collected edition of his poems, consisting as it does of all such 

 verses as the publishers could get together (eclogues, odes, and 

 epistles to his friends, and translations from Ausonius, Catullus, 

 Martial, Corneille, Benserade, Guarini, and others), if pursued 

 with a severe and indiscriminating eye may, perhaps, be thought 

 to reflect no great credit on his memory, for some of them are 

 inexcusably licentious. 



Mr. Cotton was both a wit and a scholar, of an open, cheerful, 

 and hospitable temper, endowed with fine talents for conversation, 

 and the courtesy and affability of a gentleman, and was withal a 

 great lover of angling. These qualities, together with the pro- 

 found reverence which he uniformly entertained for his adopted 

 father Walton, could not but endear him to the good old man ; 

 whose charitable practice it was, to resolve all the deviations from 

 that rule of conduct which he had prescribed himself, not into 

 vicious inclination but error. 



There are in his " Poems on several Occasions" verses, . to 

 ladies in particular, of so courtly and elegant a turn, that, bating 

 their incorrectness, they might vie with many of Waller and 

 Cowley ; others there are, that bespeak him to have had a just 

 sense of honour, loyalty, and moral rectitude, and in sundry parts 

 of his writings, and even in his poems, the evidences of piety are 

 discernible : among them is a paraphrase on that noble and 

 sublime hymn, the eighth psalm. And in the poem entitled 

 " Irregular Stanzas," are the following lines : 



" Dear solitude; the soul's best friend ; 

 That man, acquainted with himself, dost make, 

 And all his Maker's wonders, to intend ; 

 With thee I here converse at will, 

 And would be glad to do so still, 

 For it is thou, alone, that keep'st the soul awake." 



And lastly, in the following book, he, in the person of Piscator, 

 thus utters his own sentiment of a practice which few that love 

 fishing, and have not a sense of decorum, not to say of religion 

 would in these days of licence forbear : " A worm is so sure a bait 

 at all times that, excepting in a flood, I would I had laid [me] a 

 thousand pounds that I did not kill fish, more or less, with it 

 winter, or summer every day in the year ; those days always 

 excepted, that upon a more serious account always ought so to 

 be : from which it is but just to infer, that the delight he 

 took in fishing was never a temptation with him to profane the 

 Sabbath. J. H. 



